Google Rolls out Penguin 3.0, A Long Awaited Google Update

Google Rolls out Penguin 3.0, A Long Awaited Google Update

Google has finally launched the Penguin 3.0 update on October 17th, a long awaited Google algorithm update, which was supposed to be launched in this month, as John Mueller, a Google professional, apprised about the probable arrival of this in September, 2014. With a broaden chest, I would like to apprise you that I had brought a blog about the probable arrival of Penguin 3.0 in my blog, Google Penguin 3.0 is Coming To Haunt The Online Business World, more than a month ago.

Normally, it is seen that Google does not officially informs about any algorithm launch or update, but this time Google has done so. A Google professional has recently confirmed that the most recent version of Penguin algorithm update started late on Friday night.

Originally launched in April 2012 as a complementary partner to the Panda algorithm, Penguin is a big algorithm update that catches link spammers and significantly punishes their websites for their link spamming activities and provides those websites better visibility which have natural, authoritative, and relevant links. Link spamming is a process in which poor quality links are built in bulk, aiming at manipulating Google search results and making the same favorable. Once Google identifies a link spamming site, it pushes down the ranking of the site drastically in search results or deindexes the website. If the site is deindexed, it does not appear in search results.

Google has so far introduced several iterations of Penguin after its first iteration in April 2012. They are named as Penguin 2, Penguin 3, Penguin 2.0, Penguin 2.1, and the last one is recently introduced update Penguin 3.0. It is being expected that now Google will bring frequent refresh updates in order to penalize the sites of link spammers and improve the quality of the search results.

You will be, for sure, thinking how Penguin 3.0 is different from its predecessors. I would like to make this thing very clear to you that it is quite similar to predecessor updates. It has been released with the same objective, with which earlier updates were released – penalize the spamming websites and promote the deserving websites.

How big or small impact this update has on search engine results? If you ask this question, I would say that I have no idea about the same. Not only me but anyone would express his inability to provide the answer at this juncture, as Google has confirmed that it has made an update, but it has not made it clear what is the percentage of sites affected by this search results. Wait. You would get the data, as SEO experts are doing an investigation on this subject. Once their investigation is done, they would release the data and you would get the answer to your question. An important fact about the impact of updates that I would like to share with you is even the most impactful updates have not impacted more than 3-4 search results.

As Penguin 3.0 has been surfaced, it is your first responsibility to check web traffic and visibility immediately. This will help you help you know whether your website has been affected by this major update or not. In case you perceive decline in traffic and rankings, most probably your website has been hit by Penguin 3.0. Rather than falling if your website has improved in visibility as well as traffic, it indicates Google has liked your work and for the same it has rewarded your website.

If your website has noticed drop in rankings and traffic recently, you need to identify poor quality links and remove them soon. The poor quality links comprise links from link farms, article directories, paid links, links from irrelevant forums, links from non-industry specific directories, and links from spam content. You would have made links in big numbers, so you would be thinking how you can identify all poor quality links and remove them. You can use Google webmasters tools or Open site explorer for the same to get your link profile and identify the spam links. The other option or you can say the best option you have is Google Disavow. Through this tool also you can identify spam links to your website.